


Togetherness

by JulyStorms



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-18
Updated: 2014-09-18
Packaged: 2018-02-17 22:39:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,077
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2325752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JulyStorms/pseuds/JulyStorms
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They never do say “I love you.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Togetherness

**Author's Note:**

> For [Stardiouses](http://stardiouses.tumblr.com)’s birthday, which is today. Interpret Hange and Levi’s relationship in this one however you wish.

They never do say “I love you.” Things are too complicated and life is too twisted and neither of them are sure what the phrase means. It’s funny, because Hange is supposed to be knowledgeable, but this is something she can’t explain, can’t even really understand herself. Levi decides that it doesn’t really matter anyway; life has taught him that assigning a name doesn’t change anything. Names and words are for classifications and why should they have to classify anything if they don’t want to?

It’s not that they don’t love one another. Maybe they do. Maybe love is what keeps them, binds them together, draws them back into each other’s presence. Or maybe it’s not love. Maybe they’re just dependent on an understanding human being. Maybe he’s drawn to the fact that she understands him, and she to the unfailing stability to be found in his odd behavior.

They have sex a few times. It’s okay. Hange’s curiosity compels her to convince him to try it a couple more times over the years, just to see if anything changes, just to see if it’s different—or, Levi wonders, if it gets any better than that, any better than muffled, whispered moans and pleasure that is so momentary it doesn’t mean anything to him in the end. They’re both too clumsy for sex: too disinterested, too confused, too mindful of the scars on each other’s bodies and hearts and the solid, omnipresent understanding that sex is a distraction from it; it can’t, and won’t, and will never be able to _fix_ it.

They are unfixable, being only human, fragile because they are human but strong for the same reason: only human beings possess a certain amount of resilient persistence.

They never get married. Another label—marriage, and Levi’s sick of labels and Hange has no need for them. She tells him that people label gender and animals and every species of plant, but what makes a cat a _cat_ , anyway? A cat is a cat no matter what name is given it. They don’t need marriage to define what they have.

And what if, Hange secretly wonders, they regret it all later?

Levi does not share her minute concern. He’s always drawn back to her—not against his will, but perhaps because of it. She sleeps in the bed and he sleeps in the desk chair, and the arrangement suits both of them just fine. Sometimes they both fall asleep on the couch together, fingers and hearts tangled like their memories.

It is after nights like this, nights of sleeping curled into one another with his fingers resting in the gaps between hers, that Levi wakes and thinks he could almost say it, could almost whisper that he loves her into her hair or against her cheek or into the crook of her neck.

But he doesn’t. He never does. And for everything Hange understands about him, this is the one thing she’s never aware of. She remains asleep. He untangles them, and by the time she wakes up he’s gone. She stretches her stiff muscles and goes on her way, too, smiling for reasons even she doesn’t fully understand.

They say the most in the little gestures: a lifting of the eyes, quirk of one side of the mouth up or down, a sharp laugh, a snort, a grunt of annoyance, a crook of the finger. These are their intimate conversations, the kind of conversation other people _think_ they understand, but don’t, but can’t; they never will know the deeper meanings of anything, of what he means by touching her elbow as he passes her in the corridor, or what a touch on the shoulder from Hange means, exactly.

They kiss to feel one another, to connect. Every kiss is a different word, a different request, a different sort of comfort than the one preceding or proceeding it.  Their kisses don’t say, “I love you.” They explore every intricacy of their relationship, every whispered word, every touch, every fight, every snort of laughter, every annoyed glance: sleepless nights and tears and the fear of losing, of having, of surviving until the end, because the end is the unknown, and the unknown, for two people such as they, is scarier sometimes than what they’ve come to expect from the world.

* * *

 

When mankind is free, they retreat to the room they’ve shared for—they’ve lost track of the years.

They change into their nightclothes.

Hange goes to the bed, but Levi sits on his side of the couch: the left side. Hange joins him a few moments later, settling quietly down on the right.

They curl into one another, hands groping in the light of a single candle to find one another. When his fingers slide through hers, they both find reassurance they weren’t even aware they were looking for.

Her breath ruffles the fabric of his nightshirt where it slides from his shoulder. He leans his head against the back of the couch, crosses one leg over the other, considers saying something, but he doesn’t feel like talking, and Hange—she’s out of words.

Is it weird, they both wonder, for them to sit here like this? For them to sit like this when the others are flocking to the local taverns? When the others are kissing in the streets, jumping up and down, laughing and carrying on with wild abandon?

Does it make them weird to be sitting in this room doing nothing but holding hands, breathing in time to their own quiet heartbeats?

Hange considers it objectively. Maybe. She’s not sure if this is good or bad.

Levi doesn’t care one way or the other. They are who they are, and they have always been that way.

He squeezes her hand.

She shifts her head against his shoulder, curls her knees up closer to her chest.

“We made it,” she says, squeezing his hand back, holding it so tightly that Levi wonders if she’s cutting his circulation off.

His reply comes a moment later, softly, spoken in relief and maybe fear, too. He is, after all, only human. “Yeah.”

And that’s it—that’s their moment, their comfort, their maybe-or-maybe-not love. They don’t speak for the rest of the evening. She kisses his cheek; he kisses her hand, and that’s all there is to it. They stay on the couch, exactly like this, tangled in togetherness, until, hours later, both of them manage to drift off.


End file.
